Grace Brewster Murray Hopper
A Rear Admiral in the Navy and a pioneering computer scientist. She brought programming closer to English, developing an early compiler for a computer programming language.
Featuring artwork & words by Dr. Eleonora Adami, Sci-Illustrate Stories. Set in motion by Dr. Radhika Patnala.
Early life
Prior to joining the Navy, Grace (1906–1992) had an established career as a Math professor. Born in NYC in 1906, she graduated in physics and mathematics from Vassar College in 1928 and then moved to Yale, where she got her M.A (1930) and PhD (1934), becoming one of the first women to earn such a degree.
Grace started teaching at Vassar already in 1931, while studying at Yale, and continued to do so until World War II compelled her to join the U.S. Naval reserve in 1943.
In 1944 she was commissioned as a Lieutenant and in light of her mathematical background she was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance’s Computation Project at Harvard University, where she was first exposed to programming, having to deal with the Mark I, the world’s first large-scale digital computer.
“I had never met a digit and I wanted nothing to do with digits”
